The Sinners of Erspia

Laedo slumped in one of the control board's two chairs, asking himself if he had really thought this thing through. His main concern had been to get Histrina sway from the planetoid before she started killing again. His hope that he could actually persuade the station to give him control of the drive was, he realized, forlorn.

“Now where are we going?” he wondered out loud.

But this time, the machine didn't answer.

FOUR

War of the Worlds

Gauzewing and her lover Flit would delight to make love in the orchards and in the bowers, and in the scented pools and wild woods, but most of all in the air, which was where they disported now, wings beating in time together as they flew at a leisurely pace through fluffy cloud and emerged into flashing sunlight. Pivoting on the breeze, Flit seized his sweetheart. They hovered with bodies pressed close together, wings quivering, squeezing in rhythmic ecstasy. Then, the final rapture spent, they parted to go tumbling and spinning like sycamore seeds, recovering to soar and dip just above the level of the treetops.

Flit alighted on a bough which presented itself like an elegantly extended hand in the roof of the forest.

Gauzewing joined him and they sauntered to the cushioned pad of a giant green leaf. There they lay down and nestled together, gazing overhead.

It was always a fascinating sight. First, easily within flying distance, were scuds of fluffy cumulus. Far, far higher, looming over everything like a vast roof, was the upper world, with its rivers, its mountains, its seas and green plains, all upside down.

The upper world had its own clouds, too, which appeared to crawl over its surface, small and white.

Often they seemed to merge with the larger clouds of the lower world, creating a criss-cross movement.

Gauzewing averted her eyes, resting her head on Flit's shoulder. The upper world was awesome, but menacing. At night tiny flares and spots of light could be seen. These were said to be fires which the denizens of the upper world, the gnomes, used to smelt metals from ores they dug out of the ground in deep tunnels, and to make all their fiendish contraptions, such as the catapults with which they flung rocks to the lower world to try to wreak havoc. There had been none of the bombardments lately. When they began again, the fairy folk would know the gnomes were preparing to come parachuting down in another of their attempted invasions.

Hazily she watched as, approaching from the distance, a troupe of men-fairies came flying in formation, bearing spears and bows. For a while they wheeled about, practising stabbing with their spears and shooting arrows. All men regularly had to spend a few hours training in the militia, in case the gnomes came back. But their manoeuvres were half-hearted. Soon they would descend into the foliage to lounge and rest.

Then Gauzewing jerked her head up and stared in shock. Beyond the flying warriors, soaring swiftly on, came a huge round shape. It glinted in the light of the two suns, clearly made of metal. She had never seen anything like it, and as it neared it swelled and swelled, growing huger and huger.

She trilled a scream. “Gnomes! Gnomes!"

Flit was staring too. He seemed paralysed. Overhead the militia, responding to the orders of their sergeant, whose voice floated down faintly, turned to face the monster. But their nerve soon deserted them, and they fled.

Laedo, when the projector station came in sight of what he came to think of as Erspia-3, screwed up his eyes in astonishment.

The planetoid was like a split pea, divided right through its equator. The two hemispheres were poised in space, separated by about ten miles.

He had little time to study the phenomenon in detail, because the station was already sailing into the gap.

Two immense flat landscapes were revealed, each inverted in relation to the other. Standing on either, one would see an upside-down land in the sky. Laedo thought of the ancient fairy-tale of Jack the Giant-Killer.

His respect for the engineers of the planetoid cluster—or engineer, if it really was the work of a single being—increased still further. Whoever had sculpted Erspia-3 was supreme in the use of inertial fields, able to keep the two halves of this world in position by means of invisible pillars of force.

The projector station had selected one of the two landscapes and was skimming below what now became the ‘lower’ cloud layer. A lush Eden spread out before Laedo's gaze. It was a little reminiscent of Erspia-2, but with less colour. These were not orchid forests, but verdant woods with immense, spreading trees.

“I wonder if there are people here,” Histrina murmured, looking over his shoulder.

“We'll find out soon, I imagine. If there are, you had better behave yourself!"

He frowned. A flock of birds, or some other flying creatures, had appeared ahead. He blinked. For a moment they looked almost like flying humans. Then they appeared to become startled and flew off.